"At one village the doctors set up folding tables in the middle of a field with a tarp stretched over it. They saw patients there while we dispensed medications across the street in a shed. In another village we set up our tables across the door of a lady's house and ran a pharmacy right there in her doorway." Sharon Bowie describes the conditions the medical missions teams face as they minister to the people of Honduras.
"Five years ago I went on my first trip with my husband, Richard. We visited La Fortuna, a village in the mountains where sudden downpours were a daily thing. He was dispensing medications at a table out in the open with a tarp strung up over it. I held up the tarp that was filling with water and tried to run the water off the side so that Richard could continue to work throughout the rain shower. I'm the type that won't ride the rides at theme parks. I live life cautiously. Then I found myself in this rural area of a foreign country. No electricity. We traveled two hours down pig trails to get to these villages. But when I left after that first trip, I was a different person. When you "catch the vision" for how you can help to change lives, it changes you."

Richard and Sharon Bowie are members of Mount Vernon Baptist Church which sent 10 members on the first mission team for the summer. Their group traveled on May 21st, and were based in Limon, Honduras. Most of these members worked as a construction team to put a roof on the new church in Punta Pietra.

"This is a dream come true," said Richard Bowie, pharmacist and owner of Bowie's Pharmacy in Curry. "All I did was mention the need for a church to my pastor at Mount Vernon Baptist. He talked to the congregation and the church did the rest. To me this represents what God can do through His people."

In one year, Mount Vernon has raised the money to buy materials and hire a contractor from Limon - who in turn hired local workers - to build a church in the village of Punta Pietra.

"This is one way to infuse a little money into the local economy," said constructions team leader, Benny Rowe, of Curry. Rowe says he and his team "basically helped finish the project. We put the roof on during our week down there. There's still a few other little things to be done, but we arranged with local people to finish it up."

The building consisted of a concrete slab, 40' X 30', concrete block walls, trusses and a tin roof. There is no electricity available in the village. "Everything had to be battery powered," Rowe stated.

His crew included Betty Sullivan, Charles Ireland, June King, Charles Boyd, Chuck Cordell, Tracy Black and Phillip Johnsey.

The medical group from Jasper included Linda Norris, Dr. Jerry and Jean Boshell and Dr. Tom Camp. They were joined by other team members from around the country to total 23.

"This is the largest group that has gone with us," said Jean Boshell, team leader, "and we were not sure how we would be able to accommodate all of them. But the Lord was leading us and taking care of us and we had a wonderful trip."

From the original team which traveled to Honduras 10 years ago, the missions effort has grown to 14 teams. This week's team included a resident from UAB, Dr. Brad Guffey, a Nephrologist from Washington State, Dr. John Ransom, and an Auburn veterinarian student from Montgomery, Shawn Terrell, who worked with Linda Norris to dispense vitamins and parasite treatments.

When a team is coming to Honduras, Dr. Camp, or another veteran AHMEN (Alabama Honduras Medical and Education Network) member sends word to Mission Crusada de Evangelio. It contacts the ministers of the churches in the various villages. News travels by word of mouth to those who need medical care. The mission also sets the priorities for construction projects needing to be done.

Punta Pietra is located on the northern coast of Honduras with a breathtaking view of the Caribbean Sea. The village population is primarily ex-slave Ethiopians who have maintained their authenticity. Some of the people still practice witchcraft and the village has it's own witch doctor.

The medical team can only deal with the most basic medical issues and emergency needs, given the conditions in which it must perform.

"We know to prepare for skin infections, breathing problems, stomach disorders and such, so we make up our packets of medications ahead of time and label them in English and in Spanish. The people there don't take a lot of medicines. Pharmaceuticals are a real luxury to them," says Sharon Bowie.

"They live in mud and thatch huts with fires going all the time inside the houses. They are breathing wood smoke constantly. They also drink water that is not very clean so they have intestinal parasites and often malaria," she expounds.

She tells of a man who was standing by the road as they came into the village on the big yellow school bus that takes them from place to place. His hand was dripping blood. He had cut a vein in the back of his hand and was losing a lot of blood. He rode into the village with them and Dr. Guffey began working on his hand before the team even got the tables set up in the makeshift clinic.

"Given the hot, dirty, sweaty condition the man was in, he would likely have gotten infection and perhaps died without the medical care we were able to provide," Bowie stated.

Another case involved a 10-year-old boy with a head laceration received as he fell off the roof of a house that was being repaired. His father had packed the skull-deep cut with tobacco to stop the bleeding. Since he had scolded the boy several times already about climbing on the roof, he had no sympathy for his injury. He advised the boy not to make a sound while he was being stitched up by the medical team.

"That was a deep cut and they had to remove the tobacco before they could wash the wound and apply an anesthetic or injection to numb the area. He would bow up in a knot with the pain but he did not make a peep," Linda Norris recounts, amazed.

"If we had not been there to treat him, given the severity and the tobacco in the wound, that child would have had infection soon and he would likely have died from it. This is one of those cases where, if we had not been there at that exact moment a life would have been forever altered," Sharon Bowie says.

Mission team members feel that their lives are forever altered as they return to the privileged lives that have been previously taken for granted.